How To Make Your Republican Friends say "RUFNKM?"

Every so often I have to contend with someone asking me who I'm going to vote for. When I say "Kerry", I'm immediately subjected to a slew of badly connected talking points. "Blah blah Jane Fonda Blah blah Communist blah blah War Criminal blah blah Will Tax Us Till We Can't Afford it blah blah Flip Flopper Liberal blah blah...." I don't bother trying to refute it because there really isn't anything to refute, just random strings of Heritage produced crap they learned by listening to Hannity or something. I just wait and wait until I hear the clincher: " If John Kerry were President, Saddam would still be in power today!" "Hah!" I think to myself, "You just tossed me into the briar patch, sucka!" Then I say, as calmly as I can, "John Kerry wasn't running for president in 2000, Al Gore was. And if Al Gore were in, not only would Saddam be out of power and Iraq already democratic, but 9-11 wouldn't have happened." I then watch their head explode. Clearly no one's produced a talking point on that yet.

Speaking of talking points and the general destruction of discourse, I've discovered an admittedly obvious but great method to tell when someone is unprepared for an interview, and also lying. Bill Frist was on NPR this morning complaining about Demcratic Partisanship (RUFNKM??? Besides the whole pot and kettle thing, I thought partisanship was just part of how it all works) in the Senate. He used as an example the "historically unprecedented" blocking debate for the confirmation of 10 justices. When the interviewer, to his credit, countered with the fact that the Republicans had done much the same to Clinton, he simply repeated his statement, nearly word for word, but slower, as if the interviewer hadn't heard him. So there it is. Not only was Frist not prepared to be challenged (lazy bastard that he is), he knows he's just been caught in a lie, because he can only repeat the talking point.